Rookie Cops With Machine Guns Ready for 2009!

Here rookie, have a machine gun. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly is making sure 1,000 rookie police officers assigned to Times Square on New Year's Eve are ready to rock with M4 automatic machine guns. Recruits at the academy will get three days of training to familiarize them with the weapon, which until now had only been used by officers in the NYPD's elite Emergency Service Unit. The New York Post exclusive is a bit vague on whether the cops will be given the machine guns during the festivities or if they'll only be armed in the event of a Mumbai-inspired massacre. Either way, isn't it a comfort to know that Ryan Seacrest, Taylor Swift, and The Jonas Brothers could all go down simultaneously in a blaze of Barney Fife automatic gunfire? (You know Dick Clark isn't sweating it; that dude's like the Highlander.)